lines, too, on her face which only show in hours of
physical strain. I was proceeding to expound this to her at some length,
for I consider it well for women to have some one to counsel them
frankly in such matters, when she interrupted me with a gesture of
impatience.

"There, there! Tell me what you have been doing with yourself. Your
letters gave me very little information."

"I am afraid," said I, "I am a poor letter writer."

"I read each ten times over," she said.

I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a cigarette and
walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself
comfortably among the sofa-cushions.

"Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?"

A wandering minstrel was harping "Love's Sweet Dream" outside the
public-house below. I shut the window, hastily.

"Nothing so bad as that," said I. "He ought to be hung and his wild harp
hung behind him."

"You are developing nerves," said Judith. "Is it a guilty conscience?"
She laughed. "You are hiding something from me. I've been aware of it
all the time."

"Indeed? How?"

"By the sixth sense of woman!"

Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been developed like
a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also,
like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly
complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I
was put into the dock at once.

"Something has happened," I said, desperately. "A female woman has come
and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A few weeks ago she
ate with her fingers and believed the earth was flat. I found her in the
Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal
Club, and now she lives on chocolate creams and the 'Child's Guide to
Knowledge.' She is eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!"

As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the
grate. Judith's expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She
sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat stonily.

"What in the world do you mean, Marcus?"

"What I say. I'm saddled with the responsibility of a child of nature
as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire's Huron. She's English and
she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as beautiful as the houris
she believes in and is unfortunately precluded from joining. One of
these days I shall be teaching her her catechism. I hav